According to recent research, the number of seconds it takes you to get to THIS point of the sentence — 8 seconds, to be precise — is the amount of time you have to make an impression on a customer. Read Allan Hall's valuable tips.

What Change in Customer Behavior Will Impact Marketing the Most in 2016?

It's 2016 and customers are consuming more online information than ever before on an array of devices. What is your brand doing to stick out in today's flood of digital content? Read on for Dominic Kinnon’s valuable tips in DMNews.

There is a long list of reasons to localize a digital presence. For starters, SDL research shows that 46 percent of millennial consumers are more likely to purchase from a company if information is presented in their preferred language.

SDL, which has its roots in translation services and technology, acquired Web content management (WCM) and enterprise content management technology, allowing it to manage the entire customer lifecycle.

The study that was cited in the article was conducted by customer engagement company SDL, who collected data from 2,835 people in six continents, nine markets, five languages and across four generations. Not a bad sampling.

Kevin Ashbridge, account director at SDL, which was a sponsor of the Business Breakfast, said: “What we’ve really been talking about is relevance, not just for language markets, but with mobile too – that audience of one.

People sprint through processing everything on their computer, tablet or smartphone. So notes Shlomo Benartzi, author of "The Smarter Screen." His research finds that roughly 50% of subjects fail a basic test of attention span on screens.

Feeling pretty confident in your current web content management (WCM) system? Do you sleep well at night with the peace of mind that your chosen WCM toolkit is up to snuff when it comes to creating, managing, and delivering content? It's time to wake up and smell the JavaScript.

As the popularity of wearables extend beyond early adopters and brand loyalists, there is no doubt that these devices will leave a lasting impact on the future of the mobile ecosystem and even more, brand engagement.

Language Cloud, offered as part of the broader Customer Experience Cloud, offers small and medium businesses as well as enterprise companies a way to translate customer experience material quickly and cheaply.

In this edition of the Data Informed podcast, Dick Csaplar, product marketing director for enterprise translation products at SDL, which provides integrated cloud solutions for content management, analytics, language, and documentation, discusses the language barrier, the unique challenges it presents to big data analytics, and what companies are doing to eliminate this barrier to data insight.

According to a recent SDL study, 60 percent of millennials surveyed expect brand consistency across all channels. This is especially important to note as brands compete to attract the millennial generation —a generation that represents one-fourth of the U.S. population, and has $200 billion in buying power.

Dominque LeBlond knows a little bit about the web content management industry. After all, he’s been involved in it for almost twenty years, including working on the Tridion WCM before SDL acquired it, and as Principal Architect of Backbase, a portal platform. Today, LeBlond is the SVP of Product Marketing for SDL and we took the opportunity to get his perspective on what’s happening in the WCM market and his view of digital experience today and in the future.

Marketers may think customer experience tools are just a fad, but some say the only way to effect any real change in the minds and pocketbooks of customers is to admit that CX tools are an asset, not a hindrance, to meeting sales and marketing goals.

Research by CX cloud provider SDL reveals that, in the year following customers having a poor experience, brands can expect to lose 65% of the previous revenue from those customers. What's more, 64% of those customers will stop recommending a brand, leave, or give negative reviews.

SDL investigated the perceptions and behaviours of 2,784 consumers across nine countries and three generations to bring you fresh insights that should be a customer experience wake-up call for every brand.

We published our first KMWorld Trend-Setting Products list nearly a decade-and-a-half ago because we wanted to bring some clarity to the sometimes elusive knowledge management needs of our subscribers.

"Other results from that survey indicated that a majority of respondents want call center agents to acknowledge the importance of their problem. That and an apology seemingly can go a long way: in a global survey conducted by SDL."

"Coupled with projections of wearable sales potentially reaching over 130 million units by 2018, the widespread reach and immediate access could be a game changer,” Taufa said. “And of course with wearable technology comes more personal customer data to better deliver greater context, relevance, and customisation to the end user."

Dominique Leblond, senior vice president of product management at Maidenhead, England-based SDL, told CMSWire SDL is focused on helping companies bring the world to their brand through continued innovation.

“Modern WCM systems offerings and what organizations do with them has surpassed the definition of the Web CMS, according to Dominique LeBlond, senior vice president of product management at Maidenhead, England-based SDL, a Gartner Web CMS leader. “Today’s experiences are no longer just static brochures that are limited to the desktop and instead have become interactive and span desktop, mobile, tablet and other digital channels,” LeBlond added.

“Gartner ranks vendors based on completeness of vision, which focuses on the vendor's potential and points to its future chances of success and ability to execute, which rates how well a vendor sells and supports its WCM products and services globally. Gartner only looked at vendors with at least $15 million in WCM software revenue in 2014.”

Quote: "Advanced language translation tools can help brands deliver the right content that incorporates not just language and location but regional dialects and conversational phrases too. While all customers will appreciate this, this level of personalization will go a long with millennials in particular.”

“Trados Studio 2015 boasts a new user interface built for personalization and designed to increase productivity while ensuring the highest level of translation quality, all in a look and feel that works best for each individual user, according to SDL.”

“Every brand knows that broad, blanketed marketing messages are no longer effective. Personalized customer experience is becoming more vital than ever to an organization’s success, yet only 1% of businesses are providing excellent customer experiences according to Forrester’s latest report on the topic. While marketers understand the importance of personalization, many still continue to miss the mark.”

"Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) must look at how they can reach, inspire and create a brand presence across the digital domain, instead of just creating an online vending machine," says Kevin Ross, General Manager, ANZ, SDL. "To do that, requires both the marketing and Information Technology (IT) departments working together to deliver the right content, to the right customer, at the right time contextual to that customer's journey," he advises.

Collect the breadcrumbs, connect the dots and serve up success: The importance of customer experience consistency

“Today’s customer journey is increasingly fragmented and complex as consumers interact with brands offline and online across multiple channels. We might have a quick browse online during our lunch breaks, skim through Facebook on the commute home and have a casual glance at our iPads while watching TV. To add to this, customer expectations are skyrocketing, making the modern consumer both harder to track and harder to please.”

“SDL introduced SDL Trados Studio 2015, the next generation of its translation software. With a new user interface built for personalization, SDL says Studio 2015 is designed to increase productivity while ensuring the highest level of translation quality, all in a look and feel that works best for each individual user.”

“When running a global business, how do you ensure that your organization is capable of understanding and distinguishing the differences in worldwide shopping behaviors? Today it is not only crucial to recognize how consumer habits and preferences vary from country to country – it is necessary in order to stay ahead of competitors.”

“Employees who take pleasure from what they do will naturally provide a better experience to the customer. Engaged employees are loyal, and loyalty, if correctly channeled, leads to increased productivity which, in turn, leads to a better customer experience and ultimately improved company performance.”

“What’s more, enabling social login makes it significantly easier for potential customers trying to register on a company’s website while using mobile devices, a common occurrence for the average millennial as they spend so much time on their phones. A push of a button is quick and easy while typing out multiple fields on a touch screen gets annoying very quickly.”

“Global travel brands must satisfy the needs of passengers and guests both in person and online, in real-time and across multiple languages. This means ensuring a seamless, consistent experience across channels and interactions. To achieve this, marketers must adjust their strategies as customer behavior and preferences evolve, keeping these five digital travel trends in mind.”

“Mobile's effect is enormous on travelers: "62% think it's important for hotels to allow bookings on mobile devices," according to the following SDL infographic. Moreover, 56% of travelers use their smartphone to check flight status.”

“For global travel companies hoping to stand out from the crowd and really capture consumers’ attention, they must address the points of friction slowing down a customer’s journey. Travel professionals must satisfy the needs of passengers and guests both in person and online, in real-time and across multiple languages. That means ensuring a seamless, consistent experience across channels and interactions.”

"According to a recent survey by SDL, about half the consumers in the U.S., U.K. and Australia are willing to share personal information with vendors in exchange for loyalty programs and/or product/service incentives."

"While sales and promotions are a good way to attract shoppers, many consumers would actually pay more for a better experience. Among the retailers participating in ‘Black Friday in July,’ the one that will win is likely to be the one that not only has the best deals, but offers the best and most personalized experience as well.”

"In this third installment, I will again address language translation. I’ll explain how so-called “machine” translations cannot be solely relied upon — they require a human review for accuracy and readability."

"To execute a successful campaign, brand strategies should be aligned across all channels – as an inconsistent experience will frustrate shoppers and drive them away,” she said. “Retailers should also think about how they target mobile communications."

"In 2014, customer experience solutions firm SDL published a study which found that 55 percent of its 300 Millennials surveyed interacted with brands on social media in exchange for free products. Around 62 percent did so in order to receive discounts. Consumers understand the price of ‘free’ and are happy to pay it."

"The travel industry is one of many that have been disrupted by digital innovations. More consumers are turning to online marketplaces to review their options and book travel. An infographic from SDL, a provider of customer experience management solutions, outlines how travel trends are shaping the future of the digital shopping experience."

"Customers have changed their expectations for engagement and in order to remain competitive you need to make rapid changes to adapt," concluded O'Neill. "Make sure you are constantly re-evaluating your tactics to provide the best omnichannel experience, as the new channels and methods of engagement customers are using today are only the beginning."

"As Mario Lere, Lead Online Technical Project Manager for Roompot recalls,“We wanted to easily set up promotions on our website and allow our customers to make a selection based on their personal preferences for specific properties."

"That the travel industry is undergoing major changes under the influence of digital developments, without saying do more. Mobile plays an important role, more than half of the travelers checks all mobile in. Online reviews are not indispensable. SDL brings together the five major trends."

"In recent years, marketing automation has started to gain a negative reputation. Consumers are fed up with being spammed; and as a result, they are deleting, unsubscribing and disengaging. However, just because marketing automation includes “automation” in its name, it doesn’t mean that every communication powered by marketing automation technology is broadly blast to all consumers."

"Results from a SDL study of more than 1,800 millennials (aged 18-36) reveals that today’s consumers (and soon to be buyers of your products and services for their companies!) no longer care about where they are or what device they are on when interacting with a brand. Consumers expect brands to travel with them by responding to and anticipating their needs."

Don’t Get Lost in Translation, How Automation can Deliver Superb Experiences

"Results from a SDL study of more than 1,800 millennials (aged 18-36) reveals that today’s consumers (and soon to be buyers of your products and services for their companies!) no longer care about where they are or what device they are on when interacting with a brand. Consumers expect brands to travel with them by responding to and anticipating their needs."

You Only Have 8 Seconds of Attention: How to Connect with Your Audience Lightning Fast

"The Internet has put whole libraries of information at the fingertips of anyone with a mobile phone. This great democratization of information is in many ways a good thing, but it has stretched one resource rather thin: attention. There are so many demands on the attention of the average media consumer that any one piece of information—a post, a video, an image—has only 8 seconds to grab a viewer."

"Our recent research shows that consumers expect great experiences but are much more likely to remember negative experiences — and take them viral," Paige O’Neill, CMO, SDL, said. "Four out of five customers who leave the brand after a negative experience say they will never come back. With this is mind, brands need to make customer experience a priority."

"In recent years, marketing automation has started to gain a negative reputation. Consumers are fed up with being spammed; and as a result, they are deleting, unsubscribing and disengaging. However, just because marketing automation includes “automation” in its name, it doesn’t mean that every communication powered by marketing automation technology is broadly blast to all consumers."

"One surefire way to guarantee an unwavering, effortless customer experience is to minimize your brands biggest areas of failure. Do this by pinpointing where your customer experience falls short and produce meaningful solutions that will salvage customer relationships during a time of need. By understanding where you can improve your CX, organizations can work to eliminate these failures in order to turn negative experiences into positive ones," said Paige O'Neill, CMO, SDL."

"Mark Lancaster doesn‘t consider himself an entrepreneur, but he did see a gap in the market, and had the personal ability to found and create a £260 million turnover business which now leads the world in integrated translation software and customer experience services – not forgetting his innovative approach to the use of cloud technology."

"Local cultures and preferences are typically accounted for in brick-and-mortar stores, but these intricacies are often not reflected online. However, recent global research from GfK shows why retailers can no longer think of in-store and online shopping as separate entities."

"Whether consumers are traveling for business or leisure, the travel process itself can be an added inconvenience. In fact, when it comes to family vacation planning, 89% of Americans say they become more stressed."

"SDL research revealed the dominant convenience seeker category consists of individuals with high potential to become loyal customers when offered what they crave – prompt customer service interactions, quick solutions and easy-to-access products."

"Highly connected and highly empowered, this generation is a holy grail for marketers,” said Kevin Ross, SDL general manager, Australia and New Zealand (ANZ). “While Millennials are one of the most studied generations to date, research around their banking preferences and attitudes is limited."

"Millennials have very little tolerance for long response times. They prefer instant gratification, and want information available to them from any mobile connected device at any given moment. According to an SDL survey, millennials touch their smartphones 43 times per day, and 30% admit to touching more than four devices over the course of 24 hours."

"While companies might view a minor breakdown in their customer experience offering as a modest misstep in the customer relationship, unfortunately the customer will most likely not hold the same view. In fact, the term failure is relative - even failures on a small-scale can be big in the mind of the customer, and it doesn't take much to happen."

"More than ever, consumers are overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of content and offers available on every channel. The attention span of the average consumer has dropped to just 8 seconds today. How do you keep pace with consumers’ demands?"

"In a recent Aspect Consumer Experience Survey, 76 percent of consumers surveyed view customer service as a true test of how much a company values them. Yet an SDL survey of nearly 3,000 indicates that 55 percent of consumers can’t remember a single recent customer service success."

Armed with the Right Strategy, Instagram is a Valuable Marketing Weapon

"Paige O’Neill, chief marketing officer at SDL, which provides services for managing a brand’s digital footprint, offers up another important best practice — don’t use Instagram in a vacuum environment. By this she means retailers can’t just put the Instagram strategy out on its own. It needs to be part and parcel of the overall promotion, engagement and consumer-focused marketing program."

"Consumers have high expectations for brands today and little patience for a break-down in experience," said Paige O'Neill, CMO, SDL. "While the good is expected, the bad will go viral. Keeping this in mind, organizations must have an integrated strategy in place that caters to each individual consumer and empowers employees to meet customers' needs."

"While the good is expected, the bad will go viral. Keeping this in mind, organisations must have an integrated strategy in place that caters to each individual consumer and empowers employees to meet customers’ needs."

"With the rapid adoption of tablets, smartphones and accessible Wi-Fi, today’s generation of internet consumers live in a time of instant gratification. Instant gratification coupled with more competing content has led consumers to become more discerning and ruthless."

"Whether consumers are traveling for business or leisure, the travel process itself shouldn’t be an added inconvenience. Yet, when it comes to family holiday planning, more than a quarter (27%) of Brits find the planning, booking and preparation a source of great stress."

"The insights gained through my experience in strategically building brand awareness are echoed in my current work at SDL, where my charter involves differentiating the company in the incredibly crowded marketing technology landscape and building our brand against the larger, established marketing clouds. The combination of my product marketing knowledge and extensive background in communications and PR has given me a unique lens with which to approach my current role at SDL."

VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER: IT’S TIME FOR A GLOBAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE WAKEUP CALL

"SDL’s research is brutal when it comes to consumers explaining the reality of a failed Customer Experience. Only 1 in 5 will consider doing business with you again and 4 in 5 will NEVER come back! If they do return, they will not forget what you did to them – 59% will have less loyalty towards you."

"While organisations may perceive this type of CX break-down as a minor misstep in the customer relationship, the consumer sees this as a major failure. Once a customer experiences what they consider a major CX failure, the brand risks serious consequences. Specifically, 64% will stop recommending the organisation, start looking for an alternative brand or actively disparage the company via word of mouth, social media or other online channels."

"A number of the biggest social channels are now genuinely global; Twitter and Facebook both support over 70 languages. However, the online social scene is by no means the same in all markets. If you were reading this in Russia you might favour Yandex as your search engine; if you were in China then the chances are that renren might be your biggest online influencer."

"The XMT engine, referred to as ‘the next generation in machine translation’, is a complete re-write of the MT system. It was created in SDL’s own research labs and its main function is to improve the quality of language pairings that are difficult to translate, such as English to Chinese."

"The content must be personally relevant and contextual to a customer’s situation. A mother with two young children travelling to London is not after the same information as when she is travelling there alone on business trip."

Customers to Brands: Wake Up and Smell the Customer Experience Opportunity

"There is often a discrepancy between what consumers say will bring them back as a customer versus what will actually work. For instance, while 30 per cent of consumers say showing them how the business has improved as a result of their failure will bring them back to the brand, this only works for 8 per cent."

"Almost all (90%) of those experiencing a failure went on to spend the same or less with the brand during the following year. The 10% who spent more said they had no choice because they were locked into a contract or had no other alternative. In the year after a failure, brands will lose 65% of the revenue previously contributed from those customers who had experienced the failure."

“Horrible” customer experiences can be avoided for the price of a cheap lunch

"Grilling thousands of consumers across the world about what they conceived to be major customer experience (CX) failures over the last ten years, SDL found these so-called “horrible” failures required less than an hour’s time and less than the cost of lunch (albeit on the pricier side) to defuse."

"Another thing that sets SDL apart in my view is its investment in research. CMO Page O’Neill presented highlights from a recent study which reinforced (for marketers) why customer service is a crucial part of the end-to-end experience."

12 Interesting and Fun Digital Marketing Stats From the Last Week Including which brand 'won' Mad Men

"Whether it’s on the street or online when it comes to customer experience, global brands need to take into account a number of variables to communicate with consumers in a way that is personalized and relevant. Knowing the customer’s location, time zone, language, gender, device and preferences are all important to making the brand experience as contextual as possible. "

"The company reports XMT improves the quality of translations of informal and “social” language by 62 percent when compared with traditional machine translation technology, enabling multilingual social media monitoring, communication and intelligence analysis."

"Customers most often ascribed failures to the post-sale support of the customer journey stage, with long waits/poor response times (35%), poorly empowered (31%) and trained (30%) customer service the most commonly-cited reasons for CX failures. So can customers be re-engaged?"

"Perhaps the scariest result of this survey is that SDL found that many users that suffered from a bad customer experience actively tried to disparage the company every chance they could by word-of-mouth and that includes social media and other online publishing channels."

"Marketers can optimize campaign effectiveness by understanding which messages resonate with customers, what part of the customer journey might need attention, and the unique nuances between markets around the world. They can also identify best and worst practices for effective product launches by analyzing what factors have driven success or failure for competitors, both domestically and internationally."

"Developed by the SDL Language Research Group, XMT is a rewrite of machine translation technology developed to address the limitations of previous generations of machine translation. Current machine translation technologies apply a one-size-fits-all solution to all language pairs."

New Global Research from SDL Reveals Insights into Customer Experience Failures

"“Once a customer experiences what they consider a major CX failure, the brand risks serious consequences. Specifically, 64 per cent will stop recommending the organisation, start looking for an alternative brand or actively disparage the company via word of mouth, social media or other online channels."

"“The platform allows different translation algorithms to be used for different language pairs. It also allows for the development and deployment of new MT capabilities, including SDL Language Learning. This will bring artificial intelligence to machine translation by empowering the engines to learn and apply individual user language preferences."

55% of Customers Can’t Remember Having a Successful Experience [Infographic]

"“According to the study, customer service failures happened during all stages of the buying process. one-in-five failures happened pre-purchase, one-in-three happened post-sale. Unfortunately, 17 percent of customer experience fails occurred at the first point of engagement with the brand; six percent of repeat customers reported major experience failures."

"“Developing a polished digital presence in a timely manner—in the form of a website, social media channel, etc.—is pivotal both for marketing efforts and for achieving a desirable customer experience. This is particularly important as customers—Millennials especially—continue to demand an omnichannel customer experience."

"“Today's brands require responsive, flexible and integrated platforms to build relevant and innovative experiences that create a constant connection with their consumers,” said John Cavacas, Head of Technology at Blast Radius. "

"“Today's brands require responsive, flexible and integrated platforms to build relevant and innovative experiences that create a constant connection with their consumers,” said John Cavacas, Head of Technology at Blast Radius. "

"As consumers flock towards mobile devices to do everything from reading the news to executing complex banking transactions, the demand on marketers to engage with them in real-time and create better experiences has never been greater. These consumers are creating and making available so much data that they expect brands to deliver compelling, relevant and highly personalised experiences. "

"Predictive modeling tends to be more about predicting future behavior based on past behavior and known profile information. But the key to delivering great customer experiences and making a customer more valuable is to combine predictive analytics with current context."

"SDL, a provider of global customer experience management, has added several new staff. Kaarin Gordon is vice president of life sciences, Paul Barth is vice president of sales for language technology and Jessica Roland, Alison Toon and Peter Coleman are strategic account directors."

"Contextual online shopping experiences are particularly important when it comes to reaching digitally savvy millennial shoppers. It is projected that this generation will soon reach $2.45 trillion in global spending power, so engaging with them should be a major priority for retailers. In a survey of 1,800 millennials worldwide, SDL found that language plays a critical role in how this important demographic makes purchasing decisions."

"In the same Google study, more than 75 percent of leisure travelers reported using an OTA because it offered the best travel deals. Similarly, SDL reports that consumers are overwhelmingly concerned with price over loyalty programs and rewards."

"The new version is said to help organizations engage with customers in a manner that goes beyond basic relevance, incorporating specific, contextual data across all touch points. Further, says SDL, marketers can now access and organize all available and relevant customer data."

London and South entrepreneurs create 32,000 jobs and turn over £2.8 billion

"Stuart Watson, UK Entrepreneur Of The Year Leader said: “We need entrepreneurs now more than ever. They have been achieving success and defying the odds in times of change and upheaval, recognising opportunities to act quickly and decisively to gain market share and traction for their ideas and innovation."

"Marketing is now getting organized down to individual interactions that can be optimized with consumers. A lot of that is driven obviously by mobile devices. There is a lot of personal data that you can capture about a consumer but there's also a lot of really interesting contextual data. What are they doing right now?"

Latest Version of SDL Campaigns Powers Companies in Marketing Interactions Across Channels

"Global brands may utilize new features like ‘Real-Time Marketing’ which uses historical transaction details, current relevant data and demographic information to drive real-time marketing use cases. The ‘Journey ID’ feature can be leveraged to automate the manual processes of organizing, consolidating and making the available client data usable to the marketers. This ensures that all the touch-points in any multichannel campaign are optimized."

"He added: "This week, a new version of SDL Campaigns, a component of the SDL Customer Experience Cloud (CXC), has been released - designed to help organizations orchestrate and optimize customer interactions across all channels through one single view of the customer.""

"He added: "Today's consumers live in multilingual setting. An example comes from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which found that by 2060, those of Hispanic or Latino origin will make up 28.6 percent of the total population. An SDL study also found that 46 percent of the millennial population currently is more likely to purchase a product or service if information is in their preferred language. This is a huge opportunity for brands to embrace localization strategies grounded in customer engagement preference for the most personalized customer experience."

"He added: "We have a tremendous amount of content going online, and are in extensive conversations with educators on how best to engage with Sharjah’s citizens to optimise their ‘Citizen Experience’. With Sharjah24.ae, which is an electronic newspaper, published and operated by the government, we tell our story without offending others and make the world understand where we are coming from.""

"To get into the door for this Gartner MQ, vendors must have at least three of the following six capabilities: predictive analytics, campaign optimization, multidimensional segmentation, event triggering, real time recommendations or multichannel lead management."

Campaigns are extinct: How millennials can improve your marketing strategy

"In the spirit of YOLO, or 'you only live once', millennials often prioritise experiences over hard earned material possessions. Traditional behaviour and consumption patterns have shifted, and instead of searching for content, this generation will spend time carefully curating feeds so that they don’t miss a single unique, shareable experience."

"When businesses fail to adhere to the growing demands of globalization, they lose out on opportunities to foster deep relationships with customers. One of these demands is the ability to translate content into the language of the customer. All too often, language has become an afterthought in an organization's customer experience strategy, not taking cultural nuances and idioms into account."

"Contextual online shopping experiences are particularly important when it comes to reaching digitally savvy millennial shoppers. It is projected that this generation will soon reach $2.45 trillion in global spending power, so engaging with them should be a major priority for retailers."

"The SDL industry language platforms are fully customized for the requirements of each industry to ensure accurate, consistent translations across languages for a more relevant experience. Each platform integrates SDL’s existing translation technology and services and can be further customized to meet specific requirements."

"If you begin the content creation process thinking globally and specifically of the needs of each market from the start, you are far more likely to write and structure your content in a way that is easier to both translate and localize."

"To master the customer experience journey, marketers have to take into account how customers want to interact and that differs by country, culture and industry. Each industry has its own unique needs and challenges when it comes to language and translation. So it’s vital you personalise your marketing messages and copy based on the unique and specific requirements associated with your industry and target audience too."

"Each industry has its own unique needs and challenges when it comes to language and translation. For example, life sciences companies require high quality, technical translations as they exist in highly regulated markets where an inaccuracy could impact a patient, while travel and hospitality companies must translate billions of words of customer reviews as quickly as possible."

"SDL, a provider of global customer experience management, has introduced industry-specific language platforms, including language technology and services that are customized for the requirements of each of eight industries such as travel, life sciences and manufacturing."

""Branded Utility is all about creating relationships; to do this you need to be able to communicate and engage your audience in a language that they both understand and relate to," says Kirsty Waller, vice president of marketing – language solutions at customer experience company SDL, of the app."

"SDL offers consultancy to help tweak these “good enough” models for each client. “They will improve the business but won’t be perfect, so the next step is to further edit and optimise the model,” says Schweer."

"The Chief Marketing Officer's role has grown in both significance and complexity in recent years. As the expectations and demands on CMOs continue to evolve, what new challenges await them? What can they do to stay ahead of the curve? "

"Pitching its platform to a chief experience officer only means SDL faces a dragged-out sales cycle as the chief experience officer tries in vain to sell to other business leaders. In lieu of a chief experience officer, Lancaster would rather see the CEO issue a customer-experience mandate for all departments to follow."

"Delivering high-quality timely publications in closely regulated industries became challenging because the company was using different vendors to localize content in as many as 16 languages, as well as multiple content management processes and workflows. Writers found it difficult to identify and reuse existing content. After reviewing various options, Waters chose the SDL Knowledge Center to organize and manage its technical content."

"To compete as a customer-centric organisation in 2015, companies must break away from the status quo and modernise, to deliver a global customer experience across all channels, devices and languages. There are three things marketers can ensure they’re doing right away to move toward this modernisation: utilise a cloud delivery model, leverage available customer data effectively and make language and culture a priority."

"Working with the crew. I get my energy from people. As long as they are helping me or the company to move forward I can sustain very high energy and creativity. Of course the key is getting energy out of success. That drives my enjoyment of work. I'm a guy who only wants to focus on the positive. Negativity is a distraction."

"If you serve a market with a small number of potential customers, automation may not be a big deal for volume but you may need a way to tailor your web and mobile presence to specific companies and even specific individuals in that company."

5 Tips to Move From Transactional to Meaningful Customer Relationships

"The most important findings, from the perspective of customer service, is that these consumers naturally hop from one channel to the next in dealing with a company and that they expect a consistent “voice” across those channels."

"Your company may have a super CMS, great analytical software and a website that optimizes the customer experience, but if these systems don’t interface together, your view of the customer will be limited at best."

Marketing Technology Picture Getting More Complex For Modern Marketers

"Modern marketing techniques are enabled by technology tools that allow more personalized customer experiences, better targeting and more insightful analytics. But the number of tools is growing dramatically, complicating the decisions marketers must make."

How To More Effectively Market To Millennials: An Interview With CMO Paige O'Neill

"Millennials’ behaviors and preferences are changing the way brands have traditionally engaged with consumers. This demographic is part of the “always-connected” generation and therefore expects content to be delivered across devices, channels and in the language they prefer."

"We’ve always served very diverse customers. The difference is within the website environment, SDL gives us an opportunity to organize content in such a way that you don’t walk into a big supermarket and try to look for something."

"The modern marketing environment has morphed from a brand-driven model into a customer-driven one. Marketers who understand the importance of providing a personalized, relevant, customer-centric experience in real time also understand that collecting all the data their customers provide is essential to their organizational success."

"According to Mark Lancaster, chief execuive of SDL, there has been a shift in the last few years; retailers have realised that, as well as managing the e-commerce transaction, they need to provide a rich customer experience."

"Ask yourself whether your marketing creates a two-way relationship with a fair exchange of value, demonstrates business practices consistent with customers’ ethics, offers continuous value for money, and shows leadership versus competitors on key competitive factors. Responding to these mandates is essential to building trust, because this best fulfills customers’ emotional needs."

"In a retail industry that struggles to eke out profits from single-digit margins, there has to be a very clear return to justify the investment. Many retailers will watch this holiday season closely for signs of whether data-driven marketing can improve their financial performance in a measurable way."

"Business leaders should ask themselves if their organization is truly set up to effectively manage the customer experience. Unfortunately, more often than not, the answer is no, as businesses maintain a traditional organizational structure."

"To that point, consumption of the decades-old medium is rapidly evolving as a host of other brand-communication channels proliferate. But many marketers are failing to prepare for what the oldest digital channel will look like in the future."

Tapping Millennial Political and Social Passions Ahead of the Midterm Elections

"For example, a recent survey by SDL found that 30 percent of millennials use four or more digital communications devices daily, and the overall group checks mobile phones an average of 40 times per day, making a multiscreen strategy more essential than ever."

"For example, SDL helps its customers sell more of their offerings by making it easy to gather and use social intelligence and predictive analytics to place the right advertisement on the right mobile device at the right time and location—thus enhancing the customer experience and increasing conversion rates at each step of the sales cycle."

"One way to strengthen your relationships -- in love and business -- is to communicate more, and more effectively. That doesn’t mean texting every hour on the hour, particularly if the person you are aiming to strengthen your relationship with doesn’t like to text. Part of communicating with your customers better is catering your messaging technique to how that person prefers to be reached."

"According to Lancaster, omnichannel experience is “a convenient label that makes people sit up and think.” It is more than just delivering the right message at the right time to the right buyer through the right channel. Omnichannel experience is about understanding what your buyer actually wants in ways organizations can act on. It is also about “marketers finally being able to prove they are doing something useful."

"No demographic is as appealing to marketers as millennials, those folks born between 1981 and 2000. Many articles and studies have focused on reaching this elusive adult consumer, who has money and eschews traditional methods of communication in favor of a life largely spent online."

"Organizations today often rely on multiple technologies to provide the relevant data points needed to drive customer experience. These systems, however, tend to lack seamless integration with each other, resulting in a disjointed brand experience. To meet customers’ individual needs and ultimately build brand loyalty, it’s essential to have the full context of every customer interaction in one place."

"Millenials -- the 18- to 36-yearold demographic -- are a top target for marketers but impressing them with your product, content or brand messaging is no simple task. Especially if you’re still relying on traditional delivery methods like email marketing and display ads."

"This evolution of leadership stems from the changing customer experience industry. Digital channels, social media and mobile communications have fundamentally transformed the way consumers interact with brands. Customers have come to expect a high level of personalized interaction -- and in order to keep up, marketers today must create tailored experiences that map to each consumer’s unique path to purchase."

"From a customer experience perspective, it’s critical to take a step back and set a data strategy. This strategy shouldn’t focus on the Big Data, but the “small data” – just the specific information that is relevant for each customer. "

Millennials Check Their Phones 43 Times a Day. This Is What They're Looking For. (Infographic)

"Across the globe, people between the ages of 18 and 36 check their phone 43 times a day on average, according to a survey of 1,800 millennials conducted by web analytics company SDL. And while those young, plugged-in consumers are largely connecting with brands on social media, they are not impressed by quantity; they want to see specific, targeted, short and sharable content."

"The stress to cut costs in IT can cause managers to make a lot of really foolish mistakes which can be far more costly in terms of lost dollars and lost business opportunities. I reached out to dozens of industry experts and asked, “What are the worst IT cost-cutting mistakes?"

"According to SDL, a company that “allows companies to optimise their customers’ experience across the entire buyer journey”, only in America do more than half of users (52pc) aged 18-36 “have no issue with brands using their information to benefit customer experience.”

The CTO Perspective: Achieving an Integrated Approach to Customer Experience

"Often times though, in the race to appease the customer, brands are pressed for solutions and turn to an IT ingredient for a quick-fix solution. Take for example a brand that lacks a strong mobile component for customer engagement -- or needs social analytics, or improved campaigns. Ripping and replacing these one-off solutions for a complete capability set won’t yield unified results.”

"To build brand power against the big guns in online retail, small businesses should focus on online experiences and how they can replicate the personalised store experience many consumers love so much.”

In Love and in Business, Trust Is the Beginning, Middle and End of the Story

“The thing about trust is that while you can work a lifetime to earn it, it can be completely lost in an instant. Four out of five respondents said they would be more likely to give their personal information to a “trusted” brand, according to the survey, which involved surveying 4,000 consumers in the U.S., the U.K, and in Australia.”

Source: Entrepreneur, March 2014

In Brands We Trust - Why Brands Must Treat Trust Like Gold

“Big data is a big story in the marketing world: Marketers now have access to a wide range of consumer insights that they couldn’t access even five years ago. However, with this eye-in-the-sky, limitless availability of insights, there comes an unprecedented threat to consumer privacy – not least from the perspective of the consumer. And it comes as little surprise that people are guarded about sharing their data.”

“Nearly two-thirds of consumers in the U.S. and around the world are worried about how marketers are using their personal information, and 82 percent in the U.S. aren't comfortable being tracked in stores via smartphones and WiFi.”

“Back in October of last year, IBM released the latest version of it’s Global C-suite Study. This study was made up of 4,183 conversations with C-suite leaders in 70 countries and across more than 20 industries. Their analysis of the conversations uncovered three major issues that the C-suite executives feel they need to embrace if they are to stay relevant to today’s customers and remain competitive.”

“The SDL Customer Experience Cloud brings together Web content management, campaign management, social analytics, e-commerce, language translation services and documentation, with a unified user interface, according to a company announcement Monday. The suite is the result of several years of work, according to SDL.”